 A new top-down economic stimulus program from the Chinese government was stimulating interest in the country's stocks on Friday. One of the nation's big corporate champions, e-commerce giant Alibaba, NYSE Baba, benefited handsomely from this. The shares closed the day almost 3% higher, comparing very favorably to the basically flat performance of the Bellwether S&P 500 index. The government's initiative didn't specifically cover the tech sector Alibaba is a part of, but it did provide some modest optimism for the Chinese economy as a whole. The People's Bank of China will provide the nation's lenders with $800 billion when, $113 billion worth of one-year loans in an attempt to boost the economy. Authorities also eased a clutch of regulations aimed at helping the troubled domestic real estate market. Judging by the modest pop in Alibaba's price, and that for other Chinese tech titles, it seems investors are cautiously optimistic that these reforms will benefit the economy and a rising Chinese tide lifts all boats in that sea, they're hoping. This was evidenced by the market-beating performance of the country's other tech majors trading on foreign exchanges. JD.com, for example, notched a more than 4% improvement in stock price on Friday. Baidu rose by 1%, as did Chinese e-commerce stock of the moment PDD holdings. Alibaba is known best as the operator of popular low-priced retail site Temu. Top-down initiatives, especially by the Chinese government, have a way of rallying stocks as a group. That dynamic was clearly in play with the country's well-known tech names at the end of the week. Yet, the cautiously bullish reaction indicates some skepticism that the new measures will be game-changers. As ever then, it's best to buy or sell such titles more on their fundamentals. Alibaba is one of the cheapest tech-oriented companies in the world by a long shot. After dropping 18% in 2023, Alibaba's US-listed shares trade for just eight times projected earnings in its current fiscal year ending in March. With that decline, the stock, at a recent $1.72, is back where it stood following its 2014 initial public offering, despite a 10-fold rise in revenue and a 5-fold increase in earnings. Its market cap is less than 15% of its closest American peer, Amazon.com. The company sits on a small mountain of cash equal to a third of its current market value of $184 billion, adding in its core Chinese e-commerce unit, its cloud computing and logistics businesses, and a stake in ant financial. The sum of the company's parts comes to about $130 a share, nearly double the current stock price, according to analysts at China Merchant Securities in Hong Kong. Alibaba isn't risk-free. It delayed plans for an IPO of the cloud software business due to US chip export restrictions and faces growing competitive pressures in China. But headwinds from the Chinese government's crackdown on big tech and a sluggish domestic economy are reflected in the stock, says Steve Galbraith, managing partner of Kindred Capital Advisors. Before you buy stock in Alibaba Group, consider the both the positive and negative catalysts and decide if this could produce monster returns in the coming years. Thanks for watching, please don't forget to subscribe for more updates.